New Threads: STEM Education Through Fashion
Christina Ernst is a Chicago-based software engineer and content creator. Her fashioneering work under the moniker She Builds Robots has been featured in Make: Magazine, CNN, Forbes, Entertainment Weekly, The CBC, and Popular Science. She was a recurring engineering correspondent on Season 6 of the educational STEM show Mission Unstoppable.
Christina Ernst
Christina Ernst is a senior software engineer and the fashioneering content creator behind She Builds Robots (@shebuildsrobots). Her tech-fashion crossover work has been featured in CNN Style, Make: Magazine, Forbes, Entertainment Weekly, CBC, and Popular Science. She was a recurring engineering correspondent on Season 6 of the educational STEM show Mission Unstoppable with Miranda Cosgrove. She also served as the 2024 Maker-in-Residence at Chicago Public Library.
More Maker Info
https://www.shebuildsrobots.orgMore Event Info
More Project Info
https://www.shebuildsrobots.org
What inspired you to make this project?
In 2017 I entered my local hackathon with a programmable light-up dress. On demo day, I was unprepared for the enthusiasm I got from girls visiting my booth, with some asking for instructions to recreate the dress. As someone who was never into coding at a young age, it made me think a lot about the value of presenting tech in traditionally feminine contexts like design and textiles.
I walked away from the competition with an open-ended grant from the 1517 Fund and instantly knew I wanted to work on an educational resource – something more exciting than a textbook that could draw on the same visual appeal as my hackathon dress. Less Big Bang Theory and more what-if-Coco-Chanel-knew-about-conductive-thread. So I prototyped, visited classrooms, stuck circuit boards in cupcakes, and built a website: www.shebuildsrobots.org. This talk will cover everything I've learned about the STEM and social media spaces through almost a decade of fashioneering work.